Respect my Agency! | Project Diaspora

A Peace of my mind: Respect my agency 2012!

I have had roughly 24 hours to gather my thoughts about the latest fund-raising stunt undertaken by the long-in-the-tooth Invisible Children (IC) organization. In that time, I have had an opportunity to think and ruminate over exactly what to say, what the right order of the words should be coming out of my soul to address yet another travesty in shepherd’s clothing befalling my country and my continent. Usually I would fly off the handle and let passion fly, but I have grown a little since this and this and this. Addressing the complexity that is Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)’s reign of terror in northern Uganda; what with the sheer volume of victims, the survivors, the horrific examples of humanity at its worst, and the lingering ghosts of family members behind the survivors’ eyes begs a momentary pause, if but to respect the gravity of it all. I do that. I pause. I reflect and I toil with the thought that something is not right in the world that IC is still grasping at relevancy all these years after their “night walkers” campaign.

There is no easy way of saying what I feel right now, except a deep hurt and gnawing urgency to bang my head against my desk as a prescriptive to make the dumb-assery stop. Sure, Joseph Kony and his counterpart of yesteryear, Idi Amin, have largely been responsible for the single story of Uganda. I have a hard time shaking it from the lips of strangers I meet. That’s all they know or seem to want to listen to. They dismissively glaze over my breathless exultations of the great promise in our youth, our technology, our agriculture, and our women.

“Sooo, Idi Amin, huh? That was terrible. Is he still alive?”

It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes. We, Africans, are sandwiched between our historically factual imperfections and well-intentioned, road-to-hell-building-do-gooders. It is a suffocating state of existence. To be properly heard, we must ride the coattails of self-righteous idiocy train. Even then, we have to fight for our voices to be respected.

The latest IC fund-raising cum “awareness-raising” is an insult to my identity and my intellectual capacity to reasonably defend its existence as beneficial to any Ugandan. The video project is so devoid of nuance, utility and respect for agency that it is appallingly hard to contextualize. I won’t even try. Katrin Skaya said all that could have been said, “rarely seen something this stunningly, insidiously, clever crazy. Amazing case study.”

Indeed it is. But not for the reasons you would think. This IC campaign is a perfect example of how fund-sucking NGO’s survive. “Raising awareness” (as vapid an exercise as it is) on the level that IC does, costs money. Loads and loads of money. Someone has to pay for the executive staff, fancy offices, and well, that 30-minute grand-savior, self-crowning exercise in ego stroking—in HD—wasn’t free. In all this kerfuffle, I am afraid everyone is missing the true aim of IC’s brilliant marketing strategy. They are not selling justice, democracy, or restoration of anyone’s dignity. This is a self-aware machine that must continually find a reason to be relevant. They are, in actuality, selling themselves as the issue, as the subject, as the panacea for everything that ails me as the agency-devoid African. All I have to do is show up in my broken English, look pathetic and wanting. You, my dear social media savvy click-activist, will shed a tear, exhaust Facebook’s like button, mobilize your cadre of equally ill-uninformed netizens to throw money at the problem.

Cause, you know, that works so well in the first world.

I would love nothing more than to be telling you the small victories we experience working with the very scarred survivors of Kony’s atrocities. The Women of Kireka are the most resilient group of individuals that I know. Spend a day with them and you will wonder how they manage to so calmly describe to you watching their entire families burned alive, their husbands and children hacked to death, in front of them. They do it so calmly, methodically, with such articulate prose that it leaves your soul victimized for it’s privilege. Yet they don’t pause from rolling a perfectly crafted paper bead for a beautiful necklace. They don’t waste their time lamenting the lack of justice for the fallen or the abducted. Why? Because it doesn’t bring back the dead, it doesn’t dissolve the horrific images of their huts burning, or ease the scars borne of running scared into the night.

Instead, they want work and respect and business to be able to make decisions that move their lives along. They want desperately to forget and rebuild anew; thankful for their lives. They want radios and cell phones and grasp at any semblance of normalcy. They cuddle and nurse their newborns like delicate, cherished gifts. What they don’t talk about is justice. They talk about how to forgive and move on.

But I can’t tell you their story. Why? Someone else has taken over their part in this complex saga, simplified it, branded it, packaged it and is reselling it as an Action Kit. For as little as $30 and up to $500, you get your very own pimplicious t-shirt (that was made somewhere other than Uganda or Africa) and various assortments of SWEDOW you won’t care about in a month. But hey! At least you did something!

The academics have weighed in on this debate here, and here, and here and will continue to do elsewhere in the coming days. The click-activists, denied context and nuance, have spewed their ignorance all over the comments section in self-righteous indignation for all the world to see. They have whipped out their wallets and bought their very own Super Hero activist action kits. They have bombarded their friend’s Facebook wall with ignominious updates.

“You must watch this! I already ordered my action kit!”

If we all start from the premise that Kony’s actions over the last 25 years in East and Central Africa are atrocious and he should be stopped, we would be cut of the same moral cloth. Evil is something that is easy to point out from afar. But if we conclude that any one individual/organization/group has the right to hijack the voice of so many in the name of good, then I have a common sense pill to sell you.

Let me be honest. Africa is not short of problems, epidemics and atrocities. But it is also true that it is not short of miracles, ingenuity, and a proclivity to surprise. We as Africans, especially the Diaspora, are waking to the idea that our agency has been hijacked for far too long by well-meaning Western do-gooders with a guilty conscious, sold on the idea that Africa’s ills are their responsibility. This particular affliction is called “white man’s burden” in some circles. Please don’t buy into this. Africa’s problems are our own. I asserted as much almost 5 years ago when I started Project Diaspora.

And so to you we send this solemn pledge. No longer are we satisfied with the status quo. No longer will we look to the West and the East for a saviour to come. We here claim our political struggles as our own; our short comings as our own; our unrest as our own; our dissidence as our own; our broken infrastructure as our own; our diseases as our own; our uneducated as our own; our corruption as our own; our unfed children as our own.

We have to be given due courtesy to at least try to develop capacities adequate enough to address our issues. We will never develop that capacity to do so if IC and others think selling Action Kits delivers utopia. It didn’t change our way of life when IC started, and it certainly isn’t going to change our reality when the clock expires on December 31st.

I am coherent enough to realize when someone is trying to genuinely do good. At the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with assuming that the people who you are trying to help 1) need help, 2) want your help, or 3) can’t help themselves. IC and this video assumes all the above. Before anyone says ‘why haven’t you done anything to stop Kony?’, may I point out that it took the world’s most sophisticated army over a decade and billions of dollars to catch Osama bin Laden. Kony has been on the run for 25+ years. On a continent 3 times the size of America. Catching & stopping him is not a priority of immediate concern. You know what is? Finding a bed net so that millions of kids don’t die every day from malaria. How many of you know that more Ugandans died in road accidents last year (2838) than have died in the past 3 years from LRA attacks in whole of central Africa(2400)? We’ve picked our battles and we chose to simply try to live. And the world should be helping us live on our own terms, by respecting our agency to choose which battles to put capacity towards.

I’ve never heard of Germans running NGOs in [the United States of] America to try and fix the economy or Swedish NGOs in America trying to fix the declining standard of living. Africa is our problem, we hereby respectfully request you let us handle our own matters. We will make mistakes here and there, sure. That is expected. But the trade-off of writing our own destiny far outweighs the self-assigned guilt the world assigned to us. If you really want to help, keep the guilt and charity in your backyard. Bring instead, respect, and the humility to let us determine our destiny.

Very well written. I enjoyed every aspect of yours of which you shared here.

I’m a student in Denmark, and i would say, THIS is what i would call “prose-art”. The way you utter your opinion, is the way it should be done, the “awareness-ing” should not be done by the IC, but by “you” (africans), if “you” were in dire need of the first world’s help, i believe the cry-out would come from the exact same (read: you).

I am certainly going to keep up with your articles, since it seems like one of the bearable blogs covering this “issue”.

And last but not least i am saying, in regards to the article: I agree!

Well, if you’re talking about the KONY2012 (the first one) – It raised alot of questions and discussions, where most people were affected because of the “ethos and pathos appeal” in the KONY2012-viral video, but many saw through this “cloaking”, and eventually ended up saying, exactly what you write here, that, if this is such a huge problem, Ugandain politicians would ask for help, as you’re saying. People want to “respect your agency” rather than interfering and indirectly negatively criticize the Ugandians, as you put it, “mark” them as helpless human beings.

But then again, here in Denmark, talking bad about something, which seems (from the outside) to be, a good cause is tabu. This is where “we” need people like YOU, to open our eyes, eventually resulting in disclosure of these NGOs, as you state, render the Ungandians helpless and unable to act on their own.

This was very well written. While I agree with you on many of your points, do realize that there are many of us in the world who wish to do good because we know it is right and we genuinely wish to help others, not because we carry “white man’s guilt.”

Hi Brianna, I think I’ve said plenty of times that there is nothing wrong with doing “good”… but what usually happens is that people use that as a license to do whatever they want in the name of “doing good”… Doing good, the right way, requires selfless dedication to learning about he problem you are passionate about – inclusive of nuance – and then proceeding cautiously. Band-aid solutions are most often geared towards feeling like you did something; you donated $20 without asking questions, you shared a video about an issue you still din’t fully appreciate; you saved up your money to buy a plane ticket to go volunteer abroad… All good intentions, but in the end you end up just feeling good and not knowing that your efforts didn’t shift the course of the situation.

Doing good the right way is hard, but it is the most effective way to help. And if you can’t do it right, help those that are doing it right to be more effective in their work. The problem with that, again, is we don’t spend enough time understanding what doing good means.

I’m a college professor who has been teaching human trafficking to undergraduates for several years now. I also teach Uganda as a case study in conflict resolution with graduate students. In another, younger life I was an anti-apartheid activist who wrote a graduate thesis on Christian NGOs in Namibia (basically a criticism of the racism of Western Christian NGOs) — also had the absolute privilege of visiting Namibia in its first year of independence.

I was intensely disappointed in Kony2012 and now Kony2012 Part II. I’ve been aware of IC but ignorant of the details of the organization. I never gave them money, thank goodness. The Kony2012 videos certainly raised awareness in me — awareness of how angry IC is capable of making me. Your post here really caught fire with my graduate students, and I thank you for that. I’ve been looking for ways to talk to my undergraduates, some of whom are having trouble understanding why I’m so critical of IC and Kony2012. I just keep circling back to the same two points: “War is not the answer,” and “Save your money.” Listen to Africans, I tell them. Do you want strangers moving into your house and telling you how to run your family and your life?

Anyway, that was a big introduction to a very specific question I have for you: what do you know about the Global Orphan Project? My interest is that of an academic. The CEO gave me a long, long interview about its projects in Uganda, and I was overall quite impressed with the language of sustainability, and his insistence that they are committed to remaining completely invisible in Uganda, only wishing to partner with Ugandans who are already reaching out to orphans and trying to create homes and families for them. But I haven’t had time to test his ideals against actual results on the ground, or to inquire amongst Ugandans. If you have time and insight to share, I’d be most grateful. If not, no worries. Thank you for your voice. It’s an antidote to much that ails us as Americans.

Hi Beth, thanks for your comment. I don’t know the GOP very well but I’d be happy to look into the org and get back to you. I will be on the ground in May and can ask my trusted sources but from what you are telling me, they trying to strike a fine balance of helping and empowering. Would love to know more myself. Thanks for triggering a different mind set in your students and being a voice of reason.

I’m so sorry I didn’t answer before now. I know this seems incredible, but I’ve actually been toying with the idea of going over there myself, and meeting with you for a few hours. I still haven’t ruled it out! I have too much passion, I think. Anyway, if you would do this for me, I will owe you one. I mean that most sincerely. Two Major League Baseball players, both pitchers for the San Francisco Giants, have collaborated to build an orphanage in Gulu. I believe 56 orphans just moved in last week, and I think there is room for 100. I was talking to one of them last week, and I told him that you had volunteered to talk to people on the ground and get an evaluation of their work. He wants you to visit his orphanage! He is sincerely interested in feedback, and would be especially open to critical feedback. If you think you could fit this in in May, I’ll get the details for you.

This is a well written piece. I appreciated it. I’d like to respect everyone’s agency; critiques have been raised, for good reason. A lot of the criticism has been the homogenizing representation of ‘African’ voice. A few years ago, on the ‘Women of Kireka’ blog was this post: http://nuwechi.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/lra-still… The author of this post from 2008 seems to be pressing for military capture of of Joseph Kony.

i have been trying to hear as many voices as possible; the one thing that is certain – they are diverse. I have found voices of Ugandans who are, and have been, supporters of bringing the issue of the current actions of the LRA to a greater sense of urgency in the International community. Many voices of Acholi people have recognized (in prior years and currently) the LRA, while not active in Uganda, are still active in bordering countries. It seems those identifying strongest with ‘Uganda’ (from a more nationalistic lens) have a tendency to be more outraged by this video that those Ugandans identifying strongly with those individuals the LRA is currently abusing in DRC and Central African Republic and Sudan. Betty Bigombe has been reported to have said her major issue with the film was that it was a decade “too late’” for the Acholi. I’m struck by that. While true, it’s not too late for the Congolese, is it? I’m also struck by the fact that apparently all of the films over the last decade about this (from what the IC say) all 8 or so of them, received very little attention. So maybe it was too late but not for lack of trying? What do we say about the fact that Jacob, now 21, supports the film? Does his voice not count?

I’d really like to support what “Ugandan” voices are calling for – unfortunately, just like in every other country in the world, just as there is both strength, resilience, as well as need and suffering – there is diversity in opinion and voice. The real danger of the “West” in this case is not particularly the video (in my opinion) – it’s been the Western tendency to make everything such a false dichotomy. Peace vs. Justice / Development vs. Aid / Narrative vs. Pedagogy. The reality is, no matter what you believe there will be people who will agree and disagree. Truth is an elusive concept, and has been for most of the postmodern era. Apart from the discursive critique of the film – I’d really like to know – do you feel individuals are simply wrong to want increased military support to assist in capturing Kony, and bringing his case to the ICC? The AU seems to agree he needs to be captured. Betty Bigombe has been reported as saying Kony believes he will ‘die like Hitler.’

Does this change the fact the Amnesty Act of 2000 could still continue to apply on the ground with the members who were abused/coerced into participating if that is what the majority of local Acholi in Northern Uganda are wishing? Can peace and justice not occur on a parallel track? Can dialogue start to become broader, and less restrictive?

The ‘slick’ video could have been ‘better’ used to tell a different story – but is that the crux of the concern? If so, then perhaps there is a lot to learn about what people engage with as we struggle to drink our information like it was coming from a firehouse an inch from our face. The IC organization didn’t create the marketing rules it employed. They played by them. But I would agree with you, what that says about individual’s ability to attend to things that aren’t packaged in single serving shiny packages is telling, and deeply concerning. The responsibility for that rests with us, individuals – the people; not handing over abdication of responsibility to the IC filmmakers and taking seats as passive recipients of our new. I have seen videos on the lRA issue with nuance and complexity, and their hit counts rarely reach half a thousand. I’d really like to know how any presentation of this particular ‘issue’ could ever happen in 30 minutes or less without simplifying it, and committed errors of omission. I’d truly like a video on the Women of Kireka, made by the Women of Kireka that millions of people take the time watch. These narratives need to be storied if perceptions are to shift; interestingly, the film’s success – regardless of it’s failures – have cultivated a context… If people want to speak, the ear has been turned. Perhaps there can be some positive synthesis from this debate.

i understand what you are saying, and i do respect you, but please know that i do not wish to help because i feel guilty or i wish to encroach “charity” upon you, but rather because i have empathy and i would hope that if i were in this situation, someone somewhere would help me. also i do not chose to help because you are african, but because you are human. i aim the same compassion at the issues on my own continent and on all of the others as well. and while malaria (and nodding disease and poverty and many other problems) are, obviously, important and noble issues to address, there is something to be said about the violence of this – about man’s inhumanity to man and particularly to children that makes it so arresting and so seemingly senseless and preventable. regardless, when all’s said and done, we both want the same thing: peace and safety. i wish you that.

Katie, thanks so much for the comment. It is a complicated issue. Trying to assert our own independence to deal with our own issues some times leaves feelings of hurt in the air towards those who want to help us. But please understand that simply wanting to help isn’t the solution to our problems. Untold complexities and interference by the world at large has left Africa without recourse but to be at the mercy of the West. From slavery, to colonialism, to economic imperialism, the global development aid complex have make it hard for us to assert authority on our own sovereignty.So when we speak out, it is not that we are refusing the help, it is that we would like to be treated, as you say, as fellow humans – equals. Not simply to be looked down upon all the time. Trade with us, partner with us, promote us as able and capable. All of those small things add up to instilling a sense of ownership in our own futures.Like any teenager asserting their independence, it is never a pretty process. Feelings get hurt and missteps are taken. But with proper guidance, we all arise from childhood and into normal functioning adults. Why can’t we be afforded the same?I appreciate you engaging in the debate though.

There is something wrong with assuming that the people who you are trying to help 1) need help, 2) want your help, or 3) can’t help themselves.

I dont know what experience you have with this organization, or whether you watched the whole video. I also cant, and wont, interpret the video for you.

I will however, tell you that Invisible Children does what they do because the Acholi people of Northern Uganda have asked them to do so. You see in the video an Acholi man ask Jason to tell everyone he knows about Joseph Kony, because that is the only way that he will be stopped.

You’re correct when you say that the Acholi culture wants to forgive. However, that isn’t the issue. Jason, Bobby, and Laren made a promise to Jacob, Jolly, and thousands of others when they said that they would stop the LRA. This is potentially the only chance that we will ever have to catch him. His army is still relatively contained, and his whereabouts, although not pinpoint-able, could be determined with proper resources. And this global voice that IC has created can get those resources to Central-East Africa.

I’m surprised that you see Kony2012 in such a light. Of course the conflict is oversimplified. The video would need hours to explain the uprising of Alice Auma, the creation of the LRA, the dictatorship of Museveni, not to mention the deep rooted cultural divide between the Acholi and Bugandan tribes that many consider to be the origin of this issue.

I’ve been to the Offices at IC. They’re not beautiful. Until a couple years ago, it was just one big warehouse. They’re cramped and noisy and full of dance and determination and boxes upon boxes of merch, both native to Uganda and otherwise. Yes, they’re trying to stay relevant. Because they’re trying to fulfill a promise. Not out of white man remorse, but out of a simple verbal contract. And really, do you want your child living in a world where Joseph Kony can survive?

I can see from both sides of the issue. It is good for people to outcry when wrong is done and do what they can to make it right. But trying to find this man isn’t going to help Africans. He has done his harm, and he can do no more. Africa needs to rise from the ashes of its past and learn to stand on its own two feet. Yes, we must feed starving children, yes we must educate, yes we must supply the people with the fundamental necessities to survive. But there is a saying, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for the rest of his life.” More than donations of food and such, the African people need a way to provide for themselves, to build themselves up. Everyone needs help and a leg up sometimes. But to help and never teach is to cripple.

Yes! education not revenge. Very well put. Unfortunately, many Americans are too violent and uneducated to understand this. Our DOD is the center of our Universe. Might makes right. We worship our own power and deperately want to use it to ” Save the World” This is the intoxicating fantasy for young people. Most Veterans are sick of War, but that is not who KONY 2012′s target demographic is.

In one paragraph, you criticize the attempt to intervene in African affairs by Americans, while in the very preceding paragraph, you ask for money for supplies. Oh… That’s not hypocritical, at all?

People like you are delusional. You lack the ability to reason. If you want help, then you get help on the terms you are given. SORRY, but you don’t get to choose how or in which manner you receive assistance. To think so is hypocritical, naive, egotistic, and anti-intellectual.

If you sincerely think your affairs should be left alone, then that applies to every aspect. Want to be left alone? Fund your own damn tents. Complaining about receiving help in a way you don’t want is downright childish. Grow the hell up.

Mike, you revert to the very historically racist stance the author was critiquing, the enslaving white savior in explaining your critique. Really, do Africans not deserve opportunities to exercise their own agency? How is it anti-intellectual to circumscribe the terms in which one is given assistance CONSIDERING the historical relationship Europe and the US (read as colonizers/ funders of civil wars) have had with Africa and the rest of the colonized world? It seems like you would benefit from reading a bit more on the issues at hand.

Thanks for writing this – you have pretty much articulated my incoherent frothing at this same story; the slickness, the lack of substance the ease of action and the obviousness of the cause and solution ………..

all coupled with an abundance of naive goodwill waiting to be harnessed.

Colonialists have rarely admitted their real goals. Every colony has been “cilvilized” for the betterment of its subjects, or “liberated” from tyranny. Sugar slaves were branded as “assistant planters”, and nations are loaned money to “develop their economies”, not to plunder their resources.

Since so much real, intentional harm has been done under the guise of helping the less fortunate, how can we possibly trust the intentions of foreign development agencies? Even if those swarms of internet activists all have the best intentions, what is to stop their collective goodwill from being subverted into another pro-business military occupation?

What I worry about isn’t the uselessness or wastefulness of this film, or the masturbatory “liking” of a movement on facebook – it’s the effectiveness of this film as propaganda. Specifically to justify military intervention in Africa. Once this video circulates widely enough it will likely get picked up by the mainstream media, then used to build popular support for a military interention of some sort. Just “temporary” of course. “Peacekeeping” only.

Then everyone could point to the example of how the “Stop Kony” movement put so much pressure on the government that they were forced to do something about the situation. This would prove the effectiveness of the internet as the ultimate tool for freeing mankind from tyranny. Nevermind that the conflict with the “pro-Kony” forces might kill more people than Kony himself, nor that the new government might be an even more brutal and efficient one that’s merely investor-friendly. If this thing works, I’m sure we can count on the CIA…er..spontaneous popular sentiment…to spawn many more such movements in the future.

For those of you opposing to what was written here – Just consider this – would you be as enthusiastic to donate and act on for the fight against Malaria in Africa? Do you think a similar video clip against Malaria would have been as viral as this one?

Kony should be brought to justice because it’s important to show the world and other such criminals that the world has changed and they should reconsider their actions, but let’s try and act more on helping others to handle their problems then just hunt the bad guys.

This is a great article. A lot of hard truth that Americans need to know. But as you tear Americans down for their misguided compassion, ignorance, and self-righteousness, you should consider that just as your people want to maintain their dignity while being empowered, perhaps we might want to maintain some as well while being corrected?